


a hundred little pieces

by renecdote



Series: in your hands (my heart) [1]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Blood, Eddie's worrying is a love language, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Angst, Pre-Relationship, Set during season 3, hurt Buck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:34:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28948266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renecdote/pseuds/renecdote
Summary: The tap is bloody, the sink stained red, paper towels wadded up and abandoned in it, soaked with blood, and Eddie can taste his heart in his throat, sour and metallic, because he’s doing the math and—shit.Kitchen + blood + blood thinners = only bad things.(Multiplied by Buck, which equals Eddie’s blood pressure jumping through the roof.)In which Eddie takes care of Buck.
Relationships: Eddie diaz (9-1-1 TV)/Evan "Buck" Buckley
Series: in your hands (my heart) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2123211
Comments: 63
Kudos: 731





	a hundred little pieces

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted Buck and blood thinners angst and then Eddie got involved and \\_(ツ)_/¯ This idea was supposed to be half this length I don't know what happened. Anyway it's now part one of a three part series, enjoy.
> 
> TW for blood, anxiety associated with that, vomiting, vague descriptions of hospitals/medical procedures. If there's anything else you think I missed, let me know and I can add it.

The blood isn’t the first thing Eddie sees. He lets himself into Buck’s apartment with his spare key, juggling the bakery box in his hand and the phone against his ear, halfway through a conversation with Abuela. He drops the bakery box on the breakfast bar, absently wondering where Buck is. There is a pot on the stove—the burner off—and a frying pan and the clutter of ingredients, but no cook. 

_Strange_ , Eddie has time to think. 

And then he sees the blood.

He freezes, ice running through his veins. There is a cutting board splattered with it, onion abandoned half chopped, drops of red on the counter and the floor. The tap is bloody, the sink stained red, paper towels wadded up and abandoned in it, soaked with blood, and Eddie can taste his heart in his throat, sour and metallic, because he’s doing the math and—shit. 

Kitchen + blood + blood thinners = only bad things.

(Multiplied by Buck, which equals Eddie’s blood pressure jumping through the roof.)

“Abeula,” he says, cutting her off mid-sentence, not sparing the time to feel bad about it. “I have to go. I’ll call you later.”

He’s shouting Buck’s name before the phone is even hung up, turning to scour the apartment. There are more spots of blood on the floor, a trail leading up to the loft, and he is taking the stairs two at a time before he registers the muffled “up here!” called back to him.

He finds Buck in the bathroom, sitting on the floor with his back against the glass shower wall, knees bent, head tipped forward. He looks up when Eddie stops in the doorway and the same blood that was in the kitchen is on his hands and arms and face, dried rivulets of it smudged over his jaw and down his neck, disappearing into the black of his t-shirt. His lap is full of bloody paper towel and toilet paper and he has another wad of toilet paper in his hand, balled up and pressed against his nose.

“Hi,” Buck says, probably aiming for casual but missing by a mile. It comes out muffled, nasally. Eddie just stares at him dumbly, some combination of _Jesus fucking Christ Buck_ and _oh thank god it’s only a nosebleed_ warring in his chest. 

Then he remembers: blood thinners. 

“Jesus, Buck,” Eddie breathes out. He drops to his knees beside Buck, reaching for his wrist. He pulls Buck’s hand away from his face long enough to see that his nose is still bleeding—not gushing, but trickling steadily enough that it’s probably not stopping any time soon. 

“Put your head forward,” he instructs, medic mode taking over. “Pinch the soft part of your nose.”

Buck rolls his eyes. “I do know how to treat a nosebleed, you know.”

But he leans forward, pinching his nose. Eddie wraps two fingers around his other wrist, counting his pulse. It’s too fast. Buck is pale too, and he’s breathing deeply, but it’s an artificial kind of deep, carefully measured. Every few seconds his chest hitches, losing the count, air sucked rapidly back in. 

Eddie rests a hand against Buck’s back, leaves it there, solid and reassuring. “How long has it been bleeding?” he asks.

“Um. Ten minutes? Fifteen?” Buck starts to shake his head, then stops. “I don’t know. I was cooking dinner.”

“Any other symptoms?”

“I’m fine.”

“Buck.”

Buck huffs. “Kinda dizzy, I guess. Nauseous. Think I swallowed some blood, maybe.”

Eddie runs it all through the mini-paramedic in his mind: elevated heart rate, uneven breathing, dizziness, nausea, pre-exiting medical condition. 

“Are you feeling anxious?” he asks.

Buck squints at him. His voice is dry, humourless, when he says, “Is that a trick question?”

So that’s a yes. Eddie knows Buck well enough not to need the verbal confirmation, really, but the part of him that is trying not to sink into his own pit of anxious concern is running through a checklist. Nosebleeds aren’t inherently dangerous. They’re common, especially with dry weather and even drier air from the A/C inside a building, and it’s not even the first time he’s seen Buck with a nosebleed. But it’s never been this bad; never happened while he was on the blood thinners. Eddie needs to rule out anything else being wrong.

“It’s just a nosebleed, Eds,” Buck says. And it’s ridiculous, the way he’s reassuring Eddie, when he’s the one who looks like he needs reassurance. When he has to stop to clear his throat and spit blood out of his mouth, grimacing. 

The memory of Buck coughing up blood at Bobby and Athena’s house surges up and Eddie ruthlessly quashes it. He’s not going to think about that. Preferably ever, but definitely not now.

“I know it is,” he says. “Keep holding the pressure, it will probably stop soon.”

He hopes. Otherwise he’ll be seeing Buck in a hospital gown again and he’s sure neither of them want that. 

They sit on the cool tiles together. Eddie keeps one eye on Buck and the other on the time, watching the minutes crawl by with no sign of improvement. Maybe he should call Hen? Or Chimney? He doesn’t want to call 911—that’s an absolute last resort; one that feels a little dramatic for a nosebleed, even if it is Buck—but a second opinion might be a good idea. Eddie was an army medic, not a paramedic, nosebleeds aren’t exactly his area of expertise.

Beside him, Buck groans and spits out more blood. He’s shivering slightly, or maybe just trembling. 

“You okay?” Eddie checks.

“Sucks,” Buck mumbles thickly.

Eddie slides his hand further across Buck’s back, making it more like a hug, arm warm and solid around his shoulders. “I know,” he agrees, sympathetic even though he doesn’t really. He’s lucky, he supposes, that he has never been prone to nosebleeds. His only experience with bloody noses comes from fights. Sophia got them all the time when she was a kid, though, and Eddie remembers the no-nonsense approach his parents always took to it. He also remembers them with Christopher, the one time Eddie remembers him getting a nosebleed in El Paso, when they fussed and fretted even though it was a tiny trickle of blood, over in a couple of minutes. 

Eddie didn’t really understand it at the time—it was just a nosebleed, Chris was fine, not at all worried himself—but even though he’s not fussing now, he’s definitely worrying, trying to keep it locked inside where it won’t amp up the anxiety Buck is already feeling.

He reels another long chain of toilet paper off the roll and hands it to Buck. It’s three ply, the good stuff, but that’s not doing them any good now. Eddie eyes the balls of scrunched up paper in Buck’s lap and spilling onto the floor. There is… a dozen maybe? Enough to fill half a shopping bag. 

It’s been eight minutes. Somewhere between twenty and thirty if he adds up the time since Buck said it started.

“I’m going to take you to the hospital,” Eddie says. 

“‘Kay.” Buck’s eyes are closed, head still tipped forward. “In a minute.”

There is a loop of _it’s fine, don’t freak Buck out_ going through Eddie’s mind. He gives Buck forty seconds, then stands up, holding out a hand. “Come on. The sooner we go, the sooner you get to come home.”

“Yeah. Jus’.” Buck swallows, then makes a face, undoubtedly at the taste of blood in his mouth. He’s breathing through his mouth, not left with much other choice, lips that are usually pink now tinted red. 

“Come on,” Eddie says again, a little more coaxing this time.

He gets Buck as far as his knees before the last of the colour in his face drains away. Buck lurches toward the toilet and Eddie winces when he vomits. He is reminded again of the party at Bobby and Athena’s; Buck coughing, saying he was fine, the panic on his face when he looked at his hand and saw blood, the alarming stillness amid the flurry of everyone else’s motion after he passed out.

Buck is paper white, wide eyed as he stares into the toilet bowl. The slight shivering from before has become full-body trembling. 

“Buck.” Eddie squeezes his shoulder. “Buck, you’re fine, okay? You swallowed some blood, that’s all.”

He knows Buck knows that. But knowing it and not freaking out about vomiting blood when it has already landed you in hospital once, when the medication you’re taking has a black box warning about internal bleeding and throwing up blood—those are two completely different things.

Eddie pulls him away, makes sure he’s steady where he’s sitting before he turns back to flush the toilet. The vomiting has aggravating Buck’s nose even more and the blood is running more heavily, unchecked, making even more of a mess of his face and shirt. Eddie skips the toilet paper this time, opens the cabinets under the sink instead and drags out the first aid kit he personally stashed there—and three other places in the apartment—the week that Buck was put on blood thinners. 

(Eight days after, technically, in the aftermath of the tsunami, when his dreams were filled not only with Christopher, pale and cold and wet, but Buck collapsing covered in dirt and blood and god knows what else, torn and bruised in deeper places than just the visible skin.)

He rips open packages of gauze and bandages—anything absorbent, better than tissues—and presses them into Buck’s hand. Then it’s back to the same position as before: nose pinched, head tipped forward. 

“Don’t move,” he says. “I’m going to grab you a change of clothes and an icepack to try slow the bleeding some more and then I’ll help you down the stairs, okay?”

“I can walk,” Buck protests, but it’s muffled and weak and Eddie is already on his way out of the room.

It’s easy to throw a few of Buck’s things in a bag. Maybe it’s weird, that he doesn’t need to ask where anything is in his best friend’s closet, but it doesn’t feel that way. It’s Buck. It’s always been like that, living in each other’s pockets since... maybe not day one, but pretty close.

The ice packs are in the freezer, hidden under a box of choc mint drumsticks that Eddie knows Buck doesn’t like but keeps in the freezer just for him. There is probably a tub of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie lurking in there for Chris as well. Buck insists he buys it because he likes the flavour too, but Eddie has only ever seen him eat it when Chris is around.

It’s the little details like that, that make Eddie’s heart smile at just the thought of his best friend.

He catches sight of a water bottle, half full, sitting on the counter, so he grabs that too before he goes back upstairs.

“Here,” he offers the water first. “Rinse your mouth out.”

Buck rinses and spits into the toilet. The only washcloths in the cabinet are light colours. Eddie runs one under the water, making a mental note to buy Buck a new one to replace it, maybe in a navy blue or black. Something that hides blood stains a little better.

(Ideally, he’d like to do away with the possibility of blood stains entirely but. Well. If Buck being struck down by a nosebleed—of all mundane things—shows anything, it’s that he really doesn’t have to try for trouble to find him.)

Getting Buck cleaned up a bit and down to the car is surprisingly easy. Eddie carries the overnight bag and Buck pinches his nose, trying not to bleed everywhere, guided by Eddie’s hand at his elbow. He’s torn between relief and concern that Buck isn’t fighting him about going to the hospital.

(It's mostly concern.)

“Okay?” Eddie checks once they’re in the car. 

“Yeah.” Buck nods, the movement awkward with an ice pack and tissues held to his nose. “Yeah ’m good.”

Eddie highly doubts that, but he just nods and puts the car in gear.

  
******

  
They get lucky—the hospital isn’t busy. Eddie sticks by Buck’s side, takes charge through triage and waiting and being led back to a curtained off cubicle. Buck lets him; even seems grateful to have someone else in control. ‘Blood thinners’ seem to be the magic words because things happen quickly. A nurse gets them set up with Buck hooked up to the monitor, leads on his chest and a pulse oximeter on his finger, and the doctor on duty does a quick but thorough examination, puts in an IV and takes some blood, then packs Buck’s nose to put pressure on the bleed.

They give him something to help with the anxiety, too, which Buck takes with only the slightest reluctance.

When it becomes clear that they’re going to admit Buck for observation—procedure, they are assured, not because there is reason to be concerned—Eddie ducks out to call first Maddie, then Bobby. If Buck is going to be in hospital overnight, he’s definitely not going to make his shift tomorrow. And work aside, Eddie knows that Bobby would want to know. 

He lingers in the hallway another minute, waiting for a packet of chips from a vending machine because dinner is definitely not happening now—and going to get anything resembling real food from the cafeteria would mean leaving Buck for too long—then he calls Abuela as well. He apologises for hanging up on her earlier, explains the situation, and asks if she can arrange with Carla to get Christopher to school in the morning.

“Don’t tell him Buck is in the hospital,” he adds, feeling guilty about the lie of omission even as he says it. “I don’t want him to worry.”

When he steps back inside the cubicle, Buck’s eyes are closed. He looks uncomfortable and Eddie is pretty sure he isn’t sleeping, but he’s doing a good job of pretending so Eddie sits quietly by the bed and messes around on his phone until it buzzes, the message from Maddie letting him know she is on her way in.

It isn’t really a surprise that Chimney is with her. 

“What happened?” he asks Eddie quietly, while Maddie rushes to sit by Buck’s side, grabbing his hand. Buck’s eyes open, a faint smile—more like a grimace—fluttering across his lips. “Maddie said it was a nosebleed?”

Eddie makes himself tear his gaze away from Buck. “Yeah. Scared the shit out of me, man, walking into his kitchen and finding blood all over the place.” He shakes his head, trying to clear the memory. It’s hard; it’s overlaid with too many other memories of Buck and blood. “He’s going to be fine, but they’re admitting him because of the blood thinners.”

Chimney nods, like this is expected. Eddie wonders if he isn’t the only one who spent days reading anything he could get his hands on about blood thinning medication after Buck was put on them. 

It takes another hour for a bed to become available so they can move Buck from the ER to a ward. Buck manages to convince Maddie and Chimney to go home, telling them that he’s fine, he’s tired, he’s just going to sleep, visiting hours are almost over anyway.

They leave, albeit reluctantly, with promises to come back in the morning.

Eddie stays.

“You don’t have to stay,” Buck tells him, strangely small in the pristine white of the hospital bed, the heaviness of fatigue making even his anxious fiddling with the blanket and the plastic label on his wrist slow and clumsy.

He’s been cleaned up, changed out of blood stained clothes and into a hospital gown. He looks—not good, but okay, far from the terrifying image he’d made when Eddie found him. And Eddie knows, logically, that it really wasn’t that much blood, that it had just been spread around, transferred from tissues to hands to everywhere as Buck tried to get it under control. But fuck. It’s something Eddie never wants to see again.

He raises an eyebrow. “Do you want me to leave?”

He doesn’t get an answer.

He doesn’t really need one. 

Buck hates hospitals; it’s the kind of open secret none of them talk about but all of them know. Eddie isn’t a fan of them himself—too many bad memories; his own and other people’s—but he knows it’s different with Buck. Knows it’s skin-crawling anxiety, not just boredom and discomfort. So maybe Eddie doesn’t _have_ to stay, but there’s no way in hell he’s leaving.

“They’re going to kick you out,” Buck tells him.

Eddie shrugs. He knows that. “I’ll stay until they do.”

There’s another moment of silence, then:

“Thanks.”

Buck’s voice is quiet, but sincere. Eddie smiles at him. 

“I’ve got your back, remember?”

Buck’s smile looks a little awestruck, like he can’t quite believe it even more than a year after they first made that promise to each other. 

_God I love you_ , Eddie thinks. And it’s the kind of quiet thought that swells up and fills his chest, making him feel light, fingers almost tingling. He presses them against his thighs. Loving Buck is not a realisation. It’s more like a constant; a fundamental law of the universe. Maybe it was a realisation once, an earth-shattering discovery, but if anyone asked when or why or how, Eddie isn’t sure he’d be able to answer. _Everything_ feels too simple; anything else isn’t big enough to capture it all. It’s a hundred little things, a hundred little pieces of Buck, a hundred little pieces of Eddie, a hundred little ways they fit perfectly together.

One day, he might even find a way to tell Buck all of that.

“Besides,” he adds, picking up the thread of conversation he didn’t mean to lose. “You owe me dinner.”

It’s meant to be light, humorous, but guilt flashes across Buck’s face. “Sorry.”

Eddie shakes his head. “A nosebleed isn’t your fault.”

“Still sorry.”

Buck’s eyelids are fluttering, like he’s determined to keep them open even though he’s clearly tired. Exhausted. It’s been a long—what? Four hours? Closer to five now, Eddie realises after glancing at his watch. It feels like longer.

Buck is still fussing with the ID band on his wrist, rubbing it against his skin, twisting the loose end until the band tightens, pinching his skin. Eddie reaches out and squeezes his hand.

“Go to sleep, Buck," he says quietly.

Buck’s fingers flex around his. “Stay?”

“Yeah, I’m staying.”

“Don’ like hospitals,” Buck mumbles. 

“I know.” Eddie looks down at their hands, at the gentle caress of his thumb over Buck’s knuckles. Another little thing; a perfect fit. "It's okay, I'm not going anywhere."

So Buck sleeps.

And Eddie stays.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Kudos and comments are love 💛 You can also find me on tumblr [here](https://renecdote.tumblr.com/). I'm hoping to have the second part in the series done in the next week, but that depends on real life so we'll see.


End file.
